Tuesday, January 31, 2006

We’re going to be honest about something: We’ve never understood why there is such a thing as the Gay Games. We see why the Paralympics exist, and we even get the rationale behind the Special Olympics. Hell, we even sort of understand “Champions on Ice.” But we don’t like the implication behind needing a Gay Games. The reason the Special Olympics and Paralympics exist is that the contestants are mentally or physically handicapped (sometimes both) and therefore, from birth, are disadvantaged to the point where they could never compete in the real Olympics. But there is nothing physically or mentally wrong with gay people – shouldn’t we just use the real deal? That’s what other minority groups (black, Mormon, libertarian, etc) do. By insisting upon our own competition, are we admitting that we are inherently less good at sports?

That is not to say we don’t support gay athletics. Gay amateur sports leagues are a fun way to meet people and a good way to stay healthy. But the insistence upon our own, watered-down Olympics has always struck us as a little bit, well, embarrassing.

Of course, for every well-reasoned argument, there is clearly a flip side. In this case, it’s obvious. Whoever came up with the idea to get every gay guy with a rockin’ swimmers body into a locker room at the same time is clearly a genius. If we met him, we would immediately buy him a drink, and a cameraphone…

Monday, January 30, 2006

We think it's time we directed you to the online presence of one of or favorite performers, and oldest acquaintances. Soce the Elemental Wizard is something that so many people in New York strive to be, and very few achieve: he is one of a kind. As a gay Jewish rapper (he also plays the violin excellently), Soce is occupying a gap that we never knew needed to be filled.

He performs in Manhattan and Brooklyn at open mic nights, and has his own gigs occasionally where he headlines with other, like-minded MCs. While there are many exciting and hilarious parts of his website to explore, our favorite has always been the video for his song "Sad and Lonely." Be warned, however: This song is catchy, and you might find yourself singing it to yourself softly as you ride up the elevator with strangers. This we do not recommend.

We just thought of this: As strange as the idea of a gay Jewish rapper may be, why does the idea of a gay Christian rapper seem even more far-fetched?

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

You may have read on other gay blogs about the controversy surrounding David Lat, the former “Underneath Their Robes” blogger who is about to begin helming Wonkette . Conservative Lat has a great resume: Harvard undergrad and Yale Law. And he’s a funny little bitch. But what’s causing a ruckus among the queers is a series of columns he wrote for the Harvard Crimson years ago, which some say were homophobic. Is someone with an anti-gay bias going to change the heart and soul of a popular blog? Some say, yes. Won’t it be funny when everyone learns that the person is gay himself? We say, sure!

First off, here’s a sample of his college writing: "National Coming Out Day is just another event in the recent rash of identity-based pride rallies. These alleged celebrations of diversity have devolved into mutual masturbation festivals. They reassure people who are still deeply troubled by their lifestyle choices and are desperately seeking a stamp of approval. We have a duty to deny them this approval."

Ouch. That was way harsh, Tai.

Still, what’s interesting to us is not that he once wrote a series of columns that sounded homophobic. We’ve all written/said/snorted some things in our lives we wish would go away. But in his new position as Wonkette editor, Lat is likely to have to write about hypocritical arch-conservatives who lead secret gay lives. A few popular DC blogs (America Blog and Blog Active) focus on this topic. If Lat, an arch-conservative, had an under-the-radar gay life of his own, it seems to be a conflict of interest that should at least be recognized. And outrageously mocked – Wonkette is the ass-fucking blog, after all.

And yet, here we are. It is our understanding that in fact, yes, Mr. Lat is one of us – and relatively open among his friends about that fact. Otherwise, we’d be reluctant to say anything. While at Yale, he had a relationship with an undergraduate male known to us. Which makes sections of the recent Times article about him that refer to his “double life” and his difficulty explaining it to his parents especially humorous. Not to mention this passage:

"David was on this one side a hard-core Federalist Society type, who clerked for an extremely hard-right judge, and was way to the right of most of his associates. And he had this whole other side of flamboyant, theater-watching, Oscar-watching, shoe-loving, litigatrix. How do these two sides get reconciled?"

We emailed Mr. Lat to get comment and see if he had anything to say. After all, there is a possibility that we are mistaken. But he declined to respond to our questions, and hedged with a grace matched only by Anderson Cooper:

“I'm flattered by all the interest in my personal life, but I'm really undeserving of all this attention. While the publicity whore in me is obviously gratified by the media coverage, I realize it's ridiculous that this much ink has been spilled over me. I am a mere blogger -- and not just any blogger, with all the insignificance that the term denotes, but a blogger who got his start writing about judges (a topic most Americans find soporific).”

And then he asked us to call him if we were ever in DC, so we could go out. Ass fucking, here we come!

While we knew a fitness video where the instructors (sexy Lewis Payton models) exercised naked was too much to hope for, we were pleasantly surprised to find out what they mean by that suggestive title. The guys, David Rich and Sean Harley, designed a workout program specifically targeted at making your body look good naked. Not to be strong, not to be huge, not to be better at sports - merely to look good without clothes. Which, to be perfectly honest, is why we work out. And we suspect we are not the only ones.

So when we came across this marketing plan, we were impressed. To hell with you, fitness celebrity John Basedow. These guys are speaking our language.

But then we noticed a highlighted quote, among pictures of men with ridiculous abdominals in impossibly small bathing suits:

“Fact: You want to look great Naked. Who doesn’t? People will treat you better, you’ll get more attention and more friends, a more fulfilling love life, you will feel great and get to live the life you’ve always wanted to live.” [Emphasis theirs]

Hm.

This is a little bit like in “A Few Good Men” when Jack Nicholson says: “You don't want the truth because deep down in places you don't talk about at parties, you want me on that wall!” It’s a little too honest. We like to secretly think everything will get better when we look good naked, but we don’t want anyone to admit it. If we go on stripping bare the neuroses of gays, what’s next? Someone admitting that hilarious bitchiness is just a cover for massive insecurity?

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

We were blissfully ignoring the onset of February 14 until this morning when we were opening our mail at work, and we received our first Valentine’s Day gift!

Pleased and flattered, we opened it up right away. It turned out to be a DVD of “Saw II” and two severed fingers, made of chocolate.

Thanks Lions Gate Films! So romantic. We will be sure to nibble on the fingers as we cry ourselves to sleep on the 14th, fat, alone, and watching the last 25 minutes of “Love Actually,” “Bridget Jones,” and “Sean Cody's Greatest Hits” over and over…

But it did make us think. Valentines Day is something that, unlike gay marriage, adoption rights, and inheritance rights, we don’t have to fight to make our own. It’s is a bastion of heterosexuality that they can’t stop us from invading. And yet… do we really want it?

Sure, we’ve had bad Valentine’s Days (our first girlfriend, Mary, dumped us on Feb. 14 in the sixth grade) and good ones (our boyfriend Brian went to see us in “La Boheme” (we played a non-singing waiter) and brought us flowers). But for the most part, we associate the holiday with disappointed girlfriends and poorly lit Italian restaurants – and you KNOW we don’t do pasta.

So…. We propose that Halloween become the new gay Valentine’s Day. It’s really more what we are about – exhibitionism, camp, boys in skimpy costumes, better candy, big parties and “funny” shirtless pictures of ourselves specifically taken for the purpose of posting on Friendster.

And really, if you’ve ever stumbled home in a skimpy Tarzan costume at 7 in the morning, still drunk, smeared all over with blue paint from some hot guy who was dressed as Smurfette, shivering in the freezing cold Nov. 1 weather, you know… That’s a holiday done RIGHT.

We came across an interesting interview with Jeremy Irons in the UK Evening Standard yesterday. Now, Irons is clearly not a homophobe - but some of the things he said made us do a double take. Take, for example, his interpretation of the relationship between Charles and Sebastian in Evelyn Waugh's exhausting love chronicle "Brideshead Revisited." He calls their closeness a "male platonic friendship, spanning many years."

Riiiiight. And Oscar Wilde was just Bosie Douglas' "mentor."

But we especially like this part of the interview, when the author asks if Irons has ever fallen in love with another man:

"I think I am too competitive with men, that is what gets in the way. I can understand love between two men, I have no trouble getting my head around that. But I have never fallen in love with another man."

Let us digress for a moment, into personal territory...

We have been single for approximately one month in New York City. In that month, we have started going to the gym at least four times a week, spent approximately $1,000 on denim, shoes, and furniture to spice up our apartment, tried two new facial products and three new haircuts.

On Tuesdays we go to Beige. On Wednesday we go to Phoenix. On Thursdays we go to Duvet. On Friday we go to Opaline. On Saturdays we go to Starlight. On Sundays, we go to Hiro. (On Monday, the Gay Sabbath, we rest.) On each of those nights, we stand by the bar, with every other 23-38 year-old on the city, sizing up whether the boys around us have the right body, haircuts, denim, shoes and facial products. If we find a boy we like, we then have to size up all of the rest of the crowd around him to see if their body, haircuts, denim, shoes and facial products are better than ours. We are 6'3" with brown hair and blue eyes. But that guy over there who is eyeing the same cutie is 6'1" with BLOND hair and blue eyes. Who wins out?

If the temperature is right, we strike up a conversation. If we want to impress the person, we mention our fabulous job. If his is more fabulous, we might be forced to bring up our Ivy League education. If he name drops his law school, we name drop our prep school - all the while eyeing the boys around us who might have gone to prep school AND law school, and checking to see if our eyebrows are better than theirs. "You read New York Magazine?" we ask. "We prefer the New Yorker."

"Oh, you played squash at Brown?" we murmur politely. "We rowed at Yale."

Monday, January 23, 2006

When we were young, we used to get a meager allowance. We were forced to give part of it every week to the collection at our Catholic Church (No joke. And thank God, really, because we've gotten QUITE a return on that investment).

But the rest of it we spent mostly on comic books, basketball cards and shiny rocks. Our loving parents always tried to get us to think about saving up for something we might really want, like a college education for our children or a bike with one of those pink banana seats and streamers. We never listened.

And now we realize we're not the only ones. A recent UK study shows that gay men and women make more money on average than their straight counterparts - and also that we spend it mostly on "leisure activities."

"Lesbians and gay men are currently spending the bulk of their wealth on CDs (£800m a year), DVDs (£843m) and holidays – more than £3 billion was spent by lesbians and gay men on tourism last year, according to the study."

We love it when we live up to stereotypes. The leather sling market must be a little harder to follow nationally, otherwise we're sure that would be in there, too.

It kind of makes you wonder what would have happened if everyone just SHARED their copies of "Confessions on a Dancefloor" and gave all the money we saved to Jack Abramoff...

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Over at Vividblurry.com they’ve started the inevitable Hot Boy Posse debate. We’ve mentioned the HBP in previous posts but we’ve never really explained who they are because we’re hesitant to give them any more attention. But what’s going on at Vividblurry is worthy of comment.

HBP is a group of boys started by this character named GoGo Mike. There have been previous iterations of this group, for generations apparently, but now GoGo is pretty much in charge. It’s a loosely affiliated collection of handsome-ish aging white guys with good bodies who have bound together to form an exclusive club.

In our high school, there was a self-anointed group like this that called themselves the “Sweet Posse.” We kid you not. They came up with this name because thought they were “sweet,” logically enough. They wanted people to resent them but nobody had the energy. What strikes us as most unfortunate about HBP (other than the ridiculous and embarrassing website and promotional material) is that it crystallizes a lot of what is high school-like in the gay communities in even the biggest of cities. Even though there are thousands of gay men in a place like New York, there are only a few places for us all to go out, and even fewer spots that are cool – so it’s possible to know people everywhere you go.

There is a hierarchy based on looks and charisma. And most people don’t know one another, but there are certain people whom everybody knows. In a community where acceptance is extremely important to new members, it’s just a bummer that this kind of setup, this stratification, comes up. If you read the entries in the comments section over at Vividblurry, you’ll see what we’re talking about. People have a hard time distinguishing between their disdain, resentment and jealousy for HBP – potentially because they’re all the same thing. We know the HBP kids just want to have fun, but then again, that’s how Slap Bracelets got started, isn’t it? And look where that got us.

We’re sorry this was such an earnest post. To make up for it, we will tell the only joke that we know:

Wednesday, January 18, 2006

We have somehow (through no effort of our own, we swear) made it onto the reviewers mailing list for Lucas Entertainment. We got our first batch of porn to review today.

The DVD is part of a series called “Encounters.” The tag line is priceless: “In New York, with a population of 10 million, SEX happens.”

(Technically, there are only 8 million of us. Does this mean only ORAL happens?)

We have yet to screen this new gem, but from the press release, we can tell it’s going to be a winner. It’s described as a totally new idea, “an homage to New York life – fully embracing the Chelsea lifestyle.” Hmmm… 'Roided out muscle queens having marathons of anonymous sex? This new idea has really knocked our socks off.

(Which, we suppose, is good. We needed something to clean up with.)

But seriously, when can we expect to see porn that is NOT embracing the Chelsea lifestyle? How about an East Village or Lower East Side porno? You know, with thin pretty boys who are overeducated and underpaid and like slumming it in the formerly dangerous neighborhoods where RENT took place?

Monday, January 16, 2006

We ran into Alan Cumming at a Chanel dinner at Lever House last week and of course we asked him about the project in which he is involved, the Catherine Zeta-Jones Gay Rugby Musical project.

Cumming explained that he was "attached to it," but didn't really quite know what was going on. "I was in the swimming pool at Palm Springs at Christmas," Cumming (sporting a new shaved 'do) told us. "And this bloke goes 'Hey Alan, I was just called into meet with the director of this movie you’re in.' I said 'Which one?' And he said that one, and I said, 'Oh, well, news to me!'"

We decided to make the pictures on this blog less risque, so that you guys could view it at work (ok, let's be honest, law school), so we'll refrain from posting a shirtless pic of hottie Gavin Henson, who is also "attached" to the film. If you would like to ogle pictures of this English rugby star, we suggest you check out The Blog About Gavin's Tits.

Meanwhile, we're going to go spend some quality time imagining what happened between Joaquin Phoenix and Jonathan Rhys Meyers just after the cameras cut away from them at the Golden Globes...

(ps - Did anyone else notice that no one mentioned the word "gay" once when they were talking about "Brokeback Mountain," "Capote," or "Transamerica" last night? We think the only time it was used was when the "Will & Grace" cast made a joke. WTF?)

Last month we, together with our roommate Aishwarya, came up with a new and necessary term: “The Marcia.”Marcia (mahr – shá) : n. A gay man who seems butch until he opens his mouth and turns out to be a giant fag. From the Greek term “hamartia,” meaning “fatal flaw”. Example - "OMG, I finally drunk dialed my internet crush and he turned out to be a total Marcia! You think it's too late to pretend to be deaf so he doesn't talk while we're fucking at the beach house in Rehomo?"

How many times has this happened to you? Someone looks super cute on friendster, and then you see him out at Beige, and he turns out to be a prancing queen. The funniest part is usually that said girly men have no idea the way that they come off – and will often commit the faux pas of teasing other effeminate men. Which is just awkward, for everyone.

Once again, we find ourselves to be ahead of the curved penis. In this month’s “Out,” writer Erik Piepenberg examines this very phenomenon. In addition to discussing the tragicomic genius of faggy muscle daddies, the article makes an interesting point:

“Perhaps what I noticed in the speech of that butch-looking but queeny-sounding guy was a marker of culture, not physiology. Gay men may use ‘gay speech’ in much the same way some racial and ethnic minorities use their own in-group speech patterns, like blacks’ use of what sociolinguists call African-American vernacular English, or, colloquially, Ebonics.”

Holy Hollister! We can get our own SPEECH pattern!? Can we call it “Homosexual vernacular English”, or, colloquially, “what happens to your voice after dozens of cocks slam into your vocal chords”?

Friday, January 13, 2006

We just got the chance to chat with Roy Simmons, one of the three former NFL players who are currently out of the closet. The other two, David Kopay and Esera Tuaolo, have made more of a name for themselves, but with Simmon's book "Out of Bounds" coming out this month, we think you'll begin hearing his name, too.

Simmons, who played for the Giants and the Redskins from 1979-1984, wrote a crazy book. There's sex with a teammate, bath houses, prostitution, peep shows, booze - it's like a Sean Cody catalog, but in this one, the characters couldn't just go back to their cater waiter jobs at the end of the action.

When we talked to him, we asked him about what he thought the chances are that one day pro football players will be comfortable coming out.

"Minimal," he told us. "That’s how it is. Inless you’re a star, a super, super star. But if you’re just trying to make it, a general player with talent, they’re not coming forward with that, no. It’s not pressing in their life that they would need to come forward and free themselves. Free themselves for the owner to say the next morning, excuse me you’re fired."

So you're saying we've got a chance!

After, if a ball player was gay, he would definitely be a super, super star.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

A) Go to the gym immediately and remain there for the rest of your life?B) Wax your chest and grow stubble?C) Touch yourself?D) Look online for the outtakes from this photo shoot, a la Dieux du Stade?E) Kill yourself?F) Burn all of your clothes and anything in your apartment that has ever touched a carb?G) Watch Nip/Tuck?H) Drink until you forget how much less attractive you are than an Italian model?I) Go spray tanning?J) Drink until the guy at the bar looks like an Italian model?K) Rediscover your collarbone?

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Our roommate mentioned to us yesterday that he wondered how new magazines could ever start, what with all of the daily refreshed content on blogs. We agreed – even if magazine writing is better edited and more focused, it’s hard to respond to pop culture ahead of the curve of the blogs. Or to report on a niche (cars, sports, gambling, what have you) if there are people who put out copy about it every day for free online.

So it occurred to us that we might be stuck for a while with just the magazines that we already have. Which, to be honest, is pretty grim. So we’ve rounded up a little advice for our current gay publications. We can only hope they read this and take our advice. After all, we did name ourselves The FAGAT Guide…

Instinct: Get writers with a real sense of humor. If Maxim, Stuff, FHM and Giant can find hundreds of funny straight writers, surely you can find one or two gay ones. Eight-pack abs alone do not a monthly make.

Passport: Finally understand that not all of us travel with Jansport backpacks with lots of buttons and rainbow flags on them.

Genre: Get a production budget.

Details: Get it over with and stop clicking [FIND: “man” REPLACE: “woman”] in each article. It’s just confusing for everybody.

Out: Take out all the stuff about old people. Even THEY would rather be reading about young, hot things.

The Advocate: We actually think this magazine is pretty decent, and necessary. But if we had to say something, it would clearly be: lose the lezbos.

Out Traveler: Stop doing stories about places like Morocco, Dubai and Cairo. Why would you ever write about locales where gay people are persecuted and in danger? Does Sports Illustrated write about Provincetown? We don’t think so.

DNA and Blue: Figure out a way to be better distributed in the US. Honestly.

We've been chuckling for days about the recent kerfluffle in the UK over Kevin Spacey's name being included on educational materials about gay people in public schools. It reminds us of a time the "Usual Suspects" star chatted up a very handsome friend of ours at a Los Angeles party in the late 90's.

Spacey followed our friend out of the party, but was soon confronted with the fact that our straight-acting pal wanted to head home alone. K-Pax then came out with our favorite never-say-die entreaty ever:

"Hey," he grinned sheepishly. "You don't have to be a waterskier to waterski."

Monday, January 09, 2006

Gay TV channel LOGO is now casting for a pilot of a “Laguna Beach” type reality show, located in Provincetown. The camera will follow 8 to 10 P-town boys as the live, love and, presumably, tweak on the tip of Cape Cod for a summer. Here are the questions that prospective stars are supposed to answer as part of the interview process:

* Did you just break-up and need to get away for the summer?* Have you heard that P-Town is a gay-friendly mecca and you'd like to get your feet wet?* Do you work at a restaurant in P-Town and wonder what it'd be like to be on a TV show?* Do you own a business on Commercial Street?

Which, we feel, is completely the wrong way to go about casting this show. If we were going to do a reality show about Provincetown on a gay network, our questionnaire would be something more like this:

* Did you just break-up, and will stop at NOTHING to get revenge?* Have you heard that P-Town is a gay-friendly mecca and you want to get plunged more time than Wood’s Hole?* Do you work at a restaurant in P-town and sell crystal on the side?* Do you own a business on Commercial Street, and wonder what it would be like to murder people?

We would, of course, wait until the interview to find out the rest of the important information, like what was their favorite Melrose Place moment involving Kimberly, or roughly how many penises they fit inside their assholes at once...

We think this list would provide much higher quality television, in the end.

Friday, January 06, 2006

The highest Cherokee Indian court in America has decided not to strike down the first gay marriage in Indian country.

"Cherokee tribal members Kathy Reynolds, 29, and Dawn McKinley, 34, married in May 2004 in Oklahoma, just weeks after the city of San Francisco ignited a national debate on gay marriage by briefly allowing same-sex couples to wed ... Because tribal law at the time allowed same-sex marriages, a tribal clerk gave them a wedding certificate. But members in the Tribal Council sued, saying the marriage would damage the reputation of the Cherokees, and the law was later changed. In a December 22 decision announced on Wednesday, the Judicial Appeals Tribunal of the Cherokee Nation, the tribe's highest court in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, rejected the request for an injunction against the marriage."

While the decision to changing back the law to make gay marriage illegal again is a disappointment, it’s nice that the Cherokee court decided not to take away something that had already been given to this couple. They wouldn’t want to be known as… uh… never mind.

Anyway, this is the kind of wisdom and consideration we’ve come to expect from the American Indian Community. After all, these people did figure out how to use the whole buffalo.

Thursday, January 05, 2006

A senior pastor at South Tulsa Baptist Church on Oklahoma (who regularly preaches against homosexuality) was arrested on Tuesday for soliciting a male undercover cop for oral sex in a parking lot where gay prostitutes are known to hang out.

The pastor, Lonnie Latham, “has also spoken out against same-sex marriage and in support of a Southern Baptist Convention directive urging its 42,000 churches to befriend gays and lesbians and try to convince them that they can become heterosexual "if they accept Jesus Christ as their savior and reject their 'sinful, destructive lifestyle," writes the AP.

His excuse?

"I was set up. I was in the area pastoring to police."

Which, to be fair, could definitely be true. He was trying to help!

It’s just like that time we got arrested at The Cock examining people for testicular cancer.

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

The fags over at Not Only But Also have raised a very important question: In Brokeback Mountain, How Did Jake And Ennis Have Sex With No Lube?

“No wonder. Ennis, we know this is your first time and all but it takes a lot of magic lotion to get the rabbit into the hat. That Jack goes back for seconds and thirds without some serious consideration of fixing the friction is laughable. Didn't Ang consult any queers?”

We will admit that we, too, shifted uncomfortably in our seats at this moment – and not just to re-adjust the front of our jeans. Bitch, that had to HURT.

But we’d like to point out that for years we’ve been forced to watch many ridiculous and impossible straight sex scenes. For example:

* The rape/love scene between Sharon Stone and Fill-In-The-Blank Baldwin in “Sliver,” in which he sneaks up behind her and is suddenly inside her without her knowledge, ramming her against a pillar.

* The waterfall fuck scene between Kyle McLaughlin and Jessie Spano in “Showgirls.” Even we queers know sex in a chlorinated pool ain’t that great.

* The reverse cowboy situation between Sharon Stone and Catherine Zeta-Jones’ dad in “Basic Instinct.” If you think Jake Gyllenhaal was hurting…

So cut us some slack on the lube thing. After all, we remained quiet all those times in films when women had real orgasms even when they weren’t on top…

Tuesday, January 03, 2006

A gay rights group has filed a lawsuit against Massachusett’s Attorney General Thomas Reilly for allowing an initiative to reach the polls that could overturn the State Supreme Court’s decision to allow gay marriages. They say his actions were unconstitutional, as a ballot does not have the power to overturn court decisions, according to the state’s constitution. Conservative opponents to gay marriage throughout the state easily obtained the 170,000 signatures needed to get the initiative onto the ballot, mostly through the help of the well organized church networks through the state.

This is all very complicated, and we don’t live in Massachusetts. But what seems clear to us is that these opponents to gay marriage are frighteningly well organized, while we are at best a ragtag crew that gathers together occasionally for cocktails and parades and sunbathing. Nobody carries a pen to these events, much less a ballot initiative petition. (Honestly, we’re lucky if we can even get everyone to wear underwear.)

So we had an idea. What if we started a queer RELIGION? (Unitarian doesn’t count, even though it’s pretting fucking gay.) The Mormons did it less than two hundred years ago! Something that everyone could agree they believed in - that everyone loved and wanted to get involved in. We could take the best elements from other faiths! We could invent heirarchy of holy figures, like the Catholics. Following the Buddhists, we could practice our religion on our own in a quiet place, or in groups if we chose. Like Fundamentalist Christians, we could encourage gays to donate money regularly - and there could even be online worship. That way we could create an huge database of contacts, and reach people quickly and easily!

And hey, for the Jews we could even throw in some institutionalized guilt.

Conservative hacks are rumbling that Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, a vocal anti-gay rights activist, is just too 'mo friendly for a national GOP candidacy:

"He opposes gay marriage, refuses to allow out-of-state same-sex couples wed, and supports amending the state constitution to bar gay nuptials, but for many in the the right wing of the Republican Party Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney still is too tolerant of gays and lesbians to get their support for a presidential bid.

They point to a 17-year-old Massachusetts law that allows governors to issue one-day certificates to officiate at weddings. Romney has been granting dozens of those certificates to people who want to perform same-sex weddings for friends and relatives. The certificates cost $25. The Boston Globe reports that last year Romney approved 189 requests for special certificates used by people who performed same-sex marriages."

We like this line of thinking. We can't wait for when McCain gets disqualified by Republican brass for being "soft", and Condi Rice loses out because she's just a bit too, well, "white." Alan Keyes for the GOP in 2008!